Boggarts
by MadClairvoyant
Summary: Here is an attempt to explore the boggarts of different characters.
1. Regulus Black

Regulus' boggart had and always been the Marauders. He never liked change, and so his boggart never did either.

Outwardly, people assumed that it was them because they loved to torment him at school.

But it would be more accurate to say that he was afraid of them because he was afraid that they would take away his brother and change him until Sirius forgets about him.


	2. Narcissa Black

Narcissa's boggart was a family tree with plenty of burnt marks, and no names left. Sometimes, in the night, she still woke up to the faces of pale faces whom she cannot attach to any name at all. They claw at her with long, tapered fingers much like her own, wide grey eyes much like her own, sharp cheek bones and pale skin and facial structures too similar to ignore.

Family was always most important to her, and she was terrified of those abandoned, because she was afraid that one day, if she wasn't good enough, she would be too.


	3. Bellatrix Black

Bellatrix wasn't always mad. In fact, her debut had been as a young girl of seventeen, proud, arrogant, and the one thing she treasured most was her House. It brought her respect and fortune. And so, as a teenage, pureblood heiress, her boggart, of all things, was her younger cousin, Sirius. Perhaps he was like her, with a head too big for their small selves, but in his recklessness, he had given up his inheritance; a good name and all the power. As shortsighted as she had been, losing all of that was her greatest fear. She didn't want to end up like him.

When her sister Andromeda never returned from the train station after her seventh year, she realised that for once, it was her who was rejected, and by her own family at that. The next time she saw a boggart at Grimmauld Place, it changed to her younger sister's slender form, smiling wickedly at her, and she recoiled; she couldn't bear to be the one who was cast away.

Later in life, when she was in the Dark Lord's service, when she had gone into Azkaban and brokeout, her boggart had changed again. She had screamed in horror when she saw it. The dark shape twisted and changed into young Harry Potter, who smiled triumphantly at her.

If he won, she would lose all that she had left_._


	4. Andromeda Black

Andromeda's boggart had always been her intimidating sister, Bellatrix.

When she was younger, her elder sister was both her role model and the most terrifying person she had ever encountered. The girls looked very much alike, but Bella had wild dark curls as opposed to her soft, straight brown hair, matched with mad grey eyes while Andy's were quiet and contemplative. Most importantly, Andy had soft pink lips that were often curved into a small smile, whereas Bella's blood red lips were fixed permanently in a smirk that haunted her childhood nightmares. She was dead afraid of her sister, because she fit the description of 'the-monster-under-the-bed' perfectly.

At Hogwarts, when she began dating Ted Tonks, her boggart was still Bellatrix, because she the one person who would tattle on her, and destroy her careful plan. Despite all, she was neither Sirius nor Regulus; she didn't have the guts to ditch her family, but she loved Ted enough that she couldn't bear to lose him over a bunch of bigoted prats. And betrayal from family hurt the most. To Bellatrix, family had a very tenuous definition.

After the war, she took to sitting by the window and staring at old pictures, to try her hand at remembering how to feel. It was at times, as she watched Teddy toss and turn in his sleep while whining for his parents, when she would feel a spark of old anger touch her. The young child reminded her of the hundreds of families and lives her Bella ruined; even Narcissa's and hers. She wasn't really afraid of her anymore, because the old Bellatrix Black was gone, and the only vague emotion left behind was hate. And yet, observing the young girl in the photo with her sharply Black features, and catching a reflection of her own face, filled with fury, she realised why all these years later, her boggart was still Bellatrix.

She was afraid she would end up like her own sister.


	5. Harry Potter

His first boggart was a dementor. When Professor told him that it was wise because he only feared fear itself, it did make him feel better about passing out when no one had.

It took him five years, and several other boggarts—which coincidentally took the forms of the corpses of the dearly deceased—for him to realise that it wasn't fear that he was afraid of.

It was despair, that feeling of helplessness when your loved ones needed you most but you were paralysed and unable to help.

It was that crushing feeling of guilt, when the boggarts whispered the words of his nightmares, the accusations in voices that he would never hear again, that haunted him to his last days.


	6. Sirius Black

As a child, he didn't have a boggart worth mentioning, since they were so many awful things in Grimmauld Place to frighten a child.

But the boggart that he was in Grimmauld Place after his stay in Azkaban, was one that was worth mentioning.

After Molly Weasley and burst into tears upon seeing her loved ones dead, he and Mad-eye had stayed behind, and he told the old Auror to go one down whie he dealt with him. The whirling blue eye came to rest on him and Moody considered him shrewdly, before agreeing gruffly and stomping off.

The sight that greeted him was certainly not what he expected; when the boggart pretended to be a dead Harry, he'd felt a cold shiver down his spine, and imagined that that, would be his boggart.

But it wasn't. Standing before him, with their faces twisted with hatred, were people he thought he would never see again; James Potter, and Regulus Black.

He sensed, rather than heard their words; the air turned frigid, and suffocating, his guilt pressed heavily on him and he couldn't breathe as their accusations rang hollowly in his ears.

_You killed me._

_My blood is on your hands._

_I trusted you._

_You gave up on me._

_Murderer._

He had led James to his death; he had refused to help Regulus. And now they were both dead.

He was a _murderer_.


End file.
